I haven’t been watching consistently. It’s been a “read the recaps and watch the season finale” show for me the last couple of seasons. They were building to a really intense season finale. It was coming, right? You knew it was coming. In killing Clay midway through the season, making it the “secondary” shocker, you had to know that someone even more significant would be offed. And if we’re really doing Hamlet here, there’s only one loss that would force Jax-Hamlet to finally confront the true parent adversary of this story: Gemma.

Duana gets the credit for succinctly summing up why Gemma’s crime was so brilliantly executed: it’s because she did it HERSELF. Tara died by her hands. There wasn’t a hired killer. There was no gun. It was murder by her own force, by her own will, by her own…strength. It’s a sick, demented strength. And it’s a sick, demented act of a sick, demented mother, but it wasn’t taken away from her. She made the choice. She followed through to the end with that choice. There are too few stories that feature women, leading women, with choice.

Is that enough to make me switch from recaps back to actually watching every episode? Maybe. But while we’re on the subject of the Golden Globes, why doesn’t Katy Sagal ever get any love?